Background: Several biochemical markers in blood and urine have been investigated to establish their clinical application in patients with acute pancreatitis (AP). The relevant studies are reviewed and critically appraised.
Methods: Medline and the World Wide Web were searched and the relevant literature was classified under the following categories: (1) diagnosis of AP and (2) prediction of: a) disease severity, b) pancreatic necrosis and its secondary infection, c) organ failure and death, and d) disease etiology.
Results and conclusions: Serum lipase is a more reliable diagnostic marker of AP than serum amylase. Urinary strip tests for trypsinogen activation peptide (TAP) and trypsinogen-2 provide a reliable early diagnosis of AP. Useful predictors of severity may include serum procalcitonin and urinary TAP and trypsinogen-2 on admission, serum interleukins-6 and -8 and polymorphonuclear elastase at 24 h, and serum C-reactive protein (CRP) at 48 h. Other markers such as amyloid A and carboxypeptidase B activation peptide (CAPAP) need further investigation. Biochemical prediction of pancreatic necrosis requires 72 h to reach reliability and is impractical. However, the daily monitoring of serum procalcitonin provides a non-invasive detection of infected necrosis; the promising role of phospholipase A(2) in this regard requires further investigation. Early transient hypertransaminasemia reliably predicts biliary etiology, while serum carbohydrate-deficient transferrin and trypsin may predict an alcoholic etiology.